Yes, it's true...

How I try to stay organized…

Saturday, February 11, 2012

I am not the most organized person but I really love it when things are organized! :)

I do a few things around our home that I thought I would share with you on how I try to keep some things “in order”.

The day to day… We keep a calendar on our fridge that has upcoming “events” written down. For example, birthday’s and birthday parties, off duty jobs, weekend outings, etc. If you have read far enough back you may have run into some meal-planning posts of mine. I bought this turquoise meal planner from Target about a year and half ago. I used it once and then put it aside. I wasn’t really into meal planning at that time. (Why did I buy it?!) So then when I started meal planning I was doing it in word documents. Making tables and using cute fonts…I love me some cute fonts.

Recently I’ve been going through a purging stage. Getting rid of clothes, furniture, things that we don’t need. (Selling them!) I came across this organizer that I hadn’t seen in a while. I decided to put it to use and quit wasting paper and ink!

Another thing you may notice is our meals..? Manwiches? 2x a week?! Okay so let me explain…we have started a neat program to help us get out of debt. (We have student debt out the wazoooo!) So, one of the tips is to JUST buy groceries that you are going to use. We (people) spend so much money on food that just sits in our pantry. I’m so guilty of that…so I told my husband lets use up what is in the pantry. Two cans of manwich. Pasta. Pork N Beans. That’s why we are having manwiches, beef stroganoff and chicken with campfire delight (beans!).

Next up is organizing bills. I am great about handling the finances BUT I would misplace bills occasionally and you know what happens when you do that, right? So I decided to use this binder system that I found somewhere online! So sorry that I can’t remember.

Anyway, I bought one of the really big binders, made a copy of the months from the calendar on the fridge, labeled dividers, and hole punched everything. I write down all the bills on this calendar on the day they are due. For example you can see that Verizon was due on the 8th. It is paid so I marked it out. This helps me keep track of what is paid and what is not. Now, I know that I could keep up with this online. I actually tried using Mint.com for a little while but I was having some issues so back to paper and pen.

Here you can see the labels (I’ve blurred) and under each one I just hole punch and store the bill or document. I clean it out after taxes are done. I didn’t take a picture but I store the years previous bills in a filing box. Only a year. I do that in case. I don’t know why, I know I probably don’t need to but you never know. I love this system, it really does help me! It also helps me to see what bills need to be paid with which paycheck. I was horrible about that before. Now, it’s pretty easy to see. :)

Now these next pictures really fit into two categories: organization and education.My little booger Tryp’s room can become quite a disaster if we’re not careful. So I try to help him stay as organized as possible. I use try to use bins for everything. For example this blue bin hold ONLY Toy Story toys. I think I got this little canvas bin from Wal Mart.

I like this little carry all that I got from Thirty-One. It has little robots on it and it is such a boy organizing tote. This little bin/bag hold all those little cars. It is full and probably can’t take anymore so if we were to buy him new cars then we would be donating the old ones to daycare or somewhere! Why would a boy need 20 cars with only 2 hands? Beats me!

Then another thing that I’ve been dying to do but just recently finished is Tryp’s calendar! It is my old classroom calendar that I used my first year of teaching. I love it but it was just sitting around collecting dust. Now that Tryp is 4 he is understanding the concepts of day and night, days, weeks, and a little about months. Why not teach him just like I would teach in school? This all started because a few weeks ago I bought Tryp some super hero Valentine’s and I told him that we won’t take them to school until Valentine’s Day. EVERY day he was waking up asking me if he could take them to school. Every day I would disappoint him telling him that it wasn’t Valentine’s Day yet.

Every day we move the little pink heart (that says baby doll) to what day it is. Every morning we say the day of the week, the month, and the date. He knows that when we move our little pink heart to the Valentine's Day card that he will get to take his Valentine’s to school. He no longer ask me and I no longer have to disappoint him. :) Another thing you will see is one of his paintings. I thought it was cute so we pinned it up for him. You will also see a chore chart. YES, my 4 year old does chores! There are none written on there because I just cleaned it before I took the picture but they are back up. He does things like: Pick Up Toys and Put Dirty Clothes in Basket. I think I’m going to add something related to laundry or dishes. We usually have him put the silverware away (no sharp knives), load the fridge with waters, and transfer of laundry into washer and into dryer, etc.

This last picture is just Tryp’s name on his wall under his light switch. I did this a LONG time ago and I really think it helped him in learning how to spell his name. For a long time he would stand there and point to the letters saying T, R, Y, P. :)

How do you stay organized? I love to see how others stay organized because your tips could help me! I might continue doing these How I try to stay organized posts because I have other things that I did not take pictures of. Future post! ;)

1 comment:

You are so organized! I'm working on it. I just made a binder, inspired by yours (but really not the same thing at all). I posted on my personal blog and linked your blog, which will appeal to all of my 0 subscribers, lol! You can see it here: bigchicklittlechick.blogspot.com.